— Crime and Punishment (1866), Part 1, Chapter 1
About this quote
हिन्दी में
नया कदम उठाना, नई बात कहना — यही उन्हें सबसे ज़्यादा डराता है।
What it means
The sentence explains inaction entirely by fear. It leaves out every other reason a person might not take a new step — that they judged it badly, that someone depends on them, that they are simply unconvinced. Once fear is the only available explanation, hesitation can never count as evidence of anything but cowardice.
It also treats speaking and doing as one act — a new step, a new word, joined as though they cost the same — and the only property the step is ever given is that it is new. Worth keeping for how efficiently it flatters a person who is about to do something, before anyone has asked what.
What it teaches you
When a plan is defended on the grounds that it is new or bold, ask what it is, in a sentence with a verb and an object; the rhetoric of the new step works by never arriving at that sentence. And if you catch yourself calling someone else’s caution fear, check first whether they raised an objection you have not answered.
अर्थ और सीख
वाक्य कहता है कि नया कदम उठाने और नई बात कहने से लोग सबसे ज़्यादा डरते हैं। ध्यान दीजिए कि यहाँ ‘नया’ के सिवा कुछ नहीं बताया गया — कदम सही है या गलत, इसका ज़िक्र नहीं, और रुकने की हर वजह को डर मान लिया गया है। किसी की झिझक को डर कहने से पहले देखिए कि उसके पास कोई ऐसी दलील तो नहीं जिसका जवाब आपके पास नहीं है।
Where it comes from
Raskolnikov, alone, circling the act he has not yet committed. Note the pronoun — Dostoevsky wrote ‘what they fear most’, not ‘what people fear most’; the sentence is about everyone else, which is exactly Raskolnikov’s problem.
He follows it immediately with self-disgust at his own chatter. The novel’s diagnosis is already in place: he mistakes the ability to think a thing for the right to do it.
